Abstract

Magnetic island arrays with a period of and uniform over have been fabricated by depositing multilayerfilms on prepatterned pillars produced by extreme ultraviolet interference lithography.Scanning electron microscopy and magnetic force microscopy measurements made on the same islands give a direct, island-by-island comparison of the size and remanent switching field. The results demonstrate that the switching field distribution (SFD) is not primarily due to magnetostatic interactions, and a strong dependence of SFD on size is also not observed, indicating that a distribution of material properties is likely to be responsible for the SFD.

Received 28 November 2007Accepted 20 January 2008Published online 11 March 2008

Acknowledgments:

The authors would like to thank Dr. Olav Hellwig and Dr. Yasin Ekinci for their help with sample fabrication. Part of this work was performed at the SLS, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland. Financial support by the European Community through the STREP project MAFIN (No. 026513) is gratefully acknowledged.